Waruuuuuuuuup! So we all know the SBR trailer officially came out, but I wanted to wait a little bit before giving my thoughts on it cuz I didn't wanna be too biased from the sheer hype of it coming out. Now that it's been about 2 weeks I think it's a pretty good time to cover it so here I go!
First and most important point... the horses actually look GREAT! To be fair we only got a couple of shots so it's a bit too early to celebrate, but from what we did see, the 2d horses looked amazing and the 3d horses were blended really well to the point where it was barely noticeable. It's clear the team realized how much of a "make or break" part they'd be and really put in thought and effort into making them look great while not going bankrupt at the same time lol.
Next up we got the overall animation. We saw some highs with Steven, Diego and the horses and some lows with Johnny. Those couple frames where we was pushing the wheelchair looked kinda rough and the bouncing at the end wasn't as natural looking as they made Diego, but at the same time these are most likely scenes from the first episode (since it was confirmed the anime will rearrange the story a little and my guess is that it won't start with Soundman), so it's way too early to make any large judgements. Maybe I'm coping a little, but I trust good old David Production to deliver.
Briefly touching on the main theme... GOATED! I'll try not to abuse and overuse it too much in my videos but honestly... no promises lol. That being said I already miss Holy Steel 😢 It's not like I had any hopes of it being the official theme song, but I gotta give it massive credit for being quite possibly the single greatest fan made opening OF ALL TIME! I'll still make sure to use it in the vids from time to time so people don't forget this absolute gem.
Last thing I wanna cover is the character designs. There have been some criticisms swirling around with some being valid and some not. For example, I agree that in the key visual Lucy's eyes are waaaaaay too far apart. If I didn't know any better I'd say she could pass for Ungalo's mom 💀 That being said, when we see her in the actual trailer for a single scene she looks completely fine so I'm not gonna jump to conclusions.
Steven looks great and even better than in the manga in my opinion. I mean look at that side by side...
Gyro and Johnny are kind of a 50/50. There are some great looking shots:
As well as some rough looking ones:
I'm not gonna lie... that famous smile scene of his doesn't look that great. It could be because that image of him from the manga is burned into my brain from seeing it a million times, which probably makes any alterations look weird to me, buuuut it genuinely seems a little off. I'm in total nitpicking territory but I think the mouth just looks proportionally smaller. To be fair though this isn't the only time we've seen rougher initial versions so my gut feeling is they might improve a lot of these shorts for the blu-ray release the same way they did with most of the previous parts.
Last but not least I have ZERO issues with Diego. I kid you not, his design is virtually perfect. There's not a single thing I can criticize! They made broski look amazing and I honestly fear he might just mog everyone in the series including Valentine. Speaking of which, can't wait to see his character design reveal in the future! I'm putting my money on a white suit version, but I'm hoping for the pink suit one lol.
Aaaaaaand that's pretty much it! Overall, I thought it was great and also a very fitting release date of late September just like the actual race in the story. Lemme know what you thought in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
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